Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

A federal law compels the agency to add graphic images to the packs, but their first try was struck down by lawsuits from the tobacco industry. The FDA has yet to come up with alternatives.

The Wall Street Journal:
Antitobacco Groups Sue FDA To Require Graphic Warning Labels On Cigarette Packs
Antitobacco groups on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to push the agency to try again to require graphic warning labels on cigarettes. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court of Massachusetts, urges the court to force the FDA to abide by the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Under the law, the agency was required to issue rules by late 2011 for color graphics on cigarettes that depict the harms of smoking. (Mickle, 10/4)

Boston Globe:
Make Cigarette Pack Warnings Scary, Health Groups Say In Lawsuit Against The FDA
A lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal District Court in Boston aims to force the Food and Drug Administration to require cigarette packages to display images starkly depicting what tobacco can do to the human body. Dozens of countries already require such graphic warnings. In Canada, a smoker can’t open a pack without seeing an arresting picture, such as a sad-eyed child with an oxygen mask, or a pair of hands holding a diseased human heart, each with bold text about the risk of secondhand smoke and heart disease. In Australia, smokers have to stare down a photo of a gangrenous foot. (Freyer, 10/4)

In other smoking news —

Kaiser Health News:
Would California’s Proposed Tobacco Tax Hike Reduce Smoking?
Each time over the past decade or so that New York state increased its tobacco tax — now at $4.35 per pack of cigarettes — calls to the state’s Quitline spiked. And as high as the state tobacco tax went, in New York City, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiked the tax even more. “I was so angry with him, I could hardly afford it,” says Elizabeth Lane, a Harlem resident who paid $12 a pack. “I had to beg, borrow and steal to get money to buy cigarettes. (Dembosky, 10/5)

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